Spring has sprung, and so has our first South African renewable energy installation!

We’re delighted to announce that the switch has been flicked and we’re now up and running with our Solar installation on our Jo’burg DC!

Renewable energy is a vital part of our environmental strategy, and luckily for us, being in a country blessed with so much sunshine, the opportunities to increase the amount of energy we draw from renewable sources is substantial. When you combine this with an increase in technology available, and a reduction in the cost of renewable technology (the cost of renewables has more than halved since 2008), then the business case becomes obvious.

Our installation on our Johannesburg DC is our first in South Africa, and our second overall. Our first installation was Dar es Salaam Food Lovers in April 2015 which has a generational capacity of 14.72kWp.

The size of our new solar installation 362.7 kWp, which will enable us to produce nearly 600,000 kWh per annum, equating to approximately a quarter of the DCs energy demand. This is not an insignificant investment, with Food Lovers investing early R5.9m. The expected payback on this is only 6.4 years, and will enable us to further reduce our dependency on coal fired power stations and the negative environmental impact associated with that.

Our commitment to the environment does not stop there, and through Earth Lovers we are also going to be completing our very first Carbon Footprint over the coming months. This will provide us with meaningful data in terms of where most of our emissions come from, allowing us to develop a strategy to cut these emissions while saving money.

All this however is meaningless without your support and commitment, Earth Lovers will only be a success with your buy in. So please get involved, and if you would like to hear more, have any ideas or suggestions, please get in touch with us by contacting Andrew at andrew@ccafrica.co.za.